Loch Lomond

What a beautiful day! I really don't think I've ever appreciated blue skies so much. It's one of those things you don't notice much until it's gone.

Today we saw Loch Lomond, and what a pretty area. This was the Scotland I was excited to see- Ruaridh said it's a glimpse of what the highlands will be like. We got into town around one, and immediately I noticed this was one of the towns seriously into tourism - the street is lined with cute little B&Bs, and every store seems to have a stand with postcards and visitor information in the front. But lucky for us, spots like this tend to be very well marked, and it was. Less than a minute's walk from the Balloch train station, we saw a little marina leading into the loch. Everything is so.. easy going. Even though I really wanted to hike around the area, it immediately puts you into a slow-paced, ambling, feed the ducks kind of mood. We didn't walk along the water for long before it opened up into the huge sparkling loch, shadowed by rows of vast rolling hills with Ben Lomond at the forefront.
After exploring the waterfront, we stumbled into this crazy fairy-tale field, lined on both sides with tall pink and purple flowers. Masses of the fluffy white seeds were whirling around the field, and (I'm not kidding) this field led up to the lawn of Balloch Castle. Very fairy-tale like indeed. We explored a little more, but realized it's been a few hours and decided to go back and find food.
We went a 10-minutes walk to Loch Lomond shores. We kept hearing about it as a nice area with cafes and stuff, but it was an over-hyped shopping center strategically placed on the water. The center consisted of a department store, small upscale shopping mall, restaurant and over-priced aquarium. I notice the tour buses, slowly pouring out groups of very elderly people. The restaurant, Kilted something or other, is decently priced (according to our stomachs) so we sit down for food and then hit the road.

Next we planned on attending the Braemar Highland games, but it's proving to be much to hard to get to- it's this tiny little town with no train station, and neither of us are old enough to rent a car. Sadly, we have to give up. I'm so sad!! I was really looking forward to seeing that. Ah, well. Next stop is Inverness and Loch Ness. I plan on riding Nessie over to Ireland afterwords =)